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Home › Articles › Getting Ready › Adoption Step by Step

Adoption Step by Step

5 Tips to Know Before Starting the Adoption Process

By Teri Brown

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Schmidt agrees. "It is better for you and the child that you trust the agency and the worker that will be working with you," she says. "Gain as much information on the child's history and medical records as possible. One important question to ask the agency is whether they are private or not and what is their percentage of failed adoptions."

Step 3: Act

Melissa Baldwin from Granger, Ind., has adopted both domestically and internationally. For their domestic adoption, she and her partner worked with an adoption facilitator in the state of California, whose job was to match birth parents and adoptive families.

"We had written a letter and submitted a photo which she then made available to birth mothers that were working with her," Baldwin says. "In our case, she read our letter over the phone, along with a few other letters, and the birth mother chose us based on that letter. We met the birth mother and our son (who was already 5 months old) a few days later in our facilitator's office to get to know one another better and let her make sure she was comfortable with her decision to place him with us."

Kerri Hernandez, a social worker and adoption recruiter for DePelchin Children's Center out of Houston, Texas, has more than 14 years of experience in the field and has her Master's degreen in Social Work. She says flexibility is key during the adoption process.


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